Between Hypocrites
by Kimagure
Summary: Challenge 32. Sirius, James, and Peter are trying to keep their plans to become Animagi a surprise for Remus. Remus catches James studying the transformation and James has to quickly think of a way to distract him...


32. Sirius, James, and Peter are trying to keep their plans to become Animagi a surprise for Remus. Remus catches James studying the transformation and James has to quickly think of a way to distract him...  
  
Title: Between Hypocrites   
  
Author: Kimagure  
  
E-mail: chikitts@yahoo.com  
  
Website: www.livejournal.com/users/sklark97/  
  
Rating: PG   
  
Short description: Remus tries to confront James about the secret he knows the rest of the Marauders have been keeping from him. Written for the James/Remus FQF. http://fallen.ryoshuu.com/  
  
*****  
  
If there was one thing that Remus J. Lupin hated more in the world, it was a poorly kept secret.   
  
The hatred in itself was probably one of life's lesser known ironies, and as he stepped soundlessly into his dorm room, he could acknowledge the inherent hypocritical nature of the feeling. He didn't have a right to harbor such a black emotion for something that his day to day life required. In his heart, Remus knew that it was cruelly unfair of him to hold someone else's ability to keep secrets against them.   
  
But the way he figured it, if the secret hadn't involved him in some way to begin with, then it never would have bothered him in the first place. It wasn't so much that he could sniff out a lie as that he could see the shift in people's eyes and the ambience of their gestures when it came to telling little white lies. He'd seen his own face in the mirror enough times, and heard his own falsehoods echoing down the hallway on a sufficient amount of occasions to have the telltale signs memorized and etched in the back of his head.   
  
So when James's head popped up with an almost audible snap as Remus rapped lightly against the wooden dorm frame, Remus could catch the flicker of guilt that flashed for only the briefest of moments. It only clinched the deal that James hurriedly snapped the book he was reading shut and threw it into his spell locked trunk before giving Remus his full attention. "I thought you were taking a walk with Patricia down by the lake."   
  
"She got cold," he answered nonchalantly with a shrug of a shoulder. It was a morbidly cute little game they were playing. Trading lies for more lies. "Patricia" had appeared as a romantic interest around the same time that James, Peter and Sirius had decided that Remus's company wasn't always the company they preferred to keep.   
  
In truth, Remus had come to know his 'friends' well enough to know when they wanted him out of the room. Being the obliging bloke that he was, and not wanting to stick around where he obviously wasn't welcome, he'd spent a great deal of time in the last couple months reading books out by the edges of the Forbidden Forest.   
  
"Oh, well, so what are you up to now?" James's voice was only mostly nervous, and Remus couldn't stop himself from narrowing his eyes slightly at it for a moment before forcing his expression back into the congenial mask he always presented to the world. Clever of James to put Remus on the defensive before he could engage James on the offensive.   
  
But that's why he'd opted to confront James to begin with. Neither Peter nor Sirius held the power in their little group. "I thought I'd work on our Defense homework. Did you want to collaborate? It'll go faster," he offered personably before sitting down on the edge of James's bed, uninvited.   
  
Uninvited. Maybe that was the key to the anger that was simmering just under his skin, Remus decided. If they didn't want him around, all they had to do was say so. If they'd rethought their entire friendship, that was fine with him. He wouldn't pretend that it didn't feel like someone had ripped out his heart and carved it up with a Potions' scalpel, but he'd accept it. It was better than tiptoeing on through this two-faced bullshit.   
  
And he was back to the hypocrisy all over again.   
  
"Sure, I haven't even started my Defense homework yet. You know me, I always put it off until last," James said, running a hand through his disheveled hair. It was a nervous tick of his that Remus was well used to. James hid his uncertainties well, but every time his hands went to his hair, Remus knew something was making James uncomfortable. The gesture was as predictable as the rising sun.   
  
"If you haven't even started it yet, then what were you working on?" The question snuck out entirely before Remus could stop it.   
  
"Transfiguration." The answer was quick and vague.  
  
"But we don't have any homework in Transfiguration."   
  
"It was extra credit," James's hand practically flew to his hair, fluffing it up to make it look messier than it already was.   
  
"Extra credit?"   
  
"Yeah, you have a problem with that?" James huffed, frowning at Remus hard. "So this Patricia you've been seeing, what's her surname again? Which house is she in?"   
  
Hypocrite. He could hear the accusation in the words, and it stung more than Remus had thought it might. He kept secrets from everyone, his friends included. Remus didn't have a right to feel self righteously indignant when they chose not to share everything with him. "You wouldn't know her," he answered softly.   
  
"Into the shy types, are you?" And forgiven again with such ease. A part of him marveled at the way James could change his feelings like that. He'd never have the problems Remus did. He'd never spend hours sitting on the Forest floor in the middle of winter analyzing and then over analyzing the way he felt towards every person in his life. James would never suppress himself to the point that Remus found himself in.   
  
"They don't ask a lot of awkward questions," he found himself returning just as cheerfully. And wasn't it just so true. He didn't demand a lot of answers from his friends. He let them play their little espionage games. He let them run around behind his back and exclude him from their group without demanding to know the reason. He let them fuck with his head over and over again, without even whispering a hint of protest to the treatment.   
  
Pulling his Defense book out of his bag, he let it fall to the duvet with a muffled thunk. They both stared at it for a moment, neither one truly ready to commit to the farce they'd created between them.   
  
"If you want me to go, I'll understand," he heard himself lie, quietly.   
  
The hell he'd understand. All he understood was that they'd found something about him that they couldn't like. That they couldn't include in on certain things. In some respects, he was slowly realizing what he'd always suspected. That they were too good to be true. A group of outsiders to which he belonged? A place that he fit in and where he was considered 'just one of the blokes'? It was amazing that he'd bought into the fairy tale in the first place, let alone that he'd continued to believe in it for so long.   
  
"Remus," the guilt in James's voice caught his attention, and he favored his friend with a patient stare. "It's not what you think."   
  
"How would you know what I think?" Had they ever asked? Better yet, had he ever volunteered? He was more than willing before now to play along, to play dumb. And the idea that his unwillingness to challenge that which made him unhappy, his hatred of rocking the boat and his fear that in doing so he'd lose what little parts of them that they were willing to give him had created a rift this wide was horrifying. He didn't know them anymore. They weren't the friends he remembered hanging around with as a first year.   
  
They weren't the people he remembered who had reassured him that his lycanthropy wasn't a big deal to them. They weren't the same chaps who he'd shared so many intrigues with. These people, these marauders were strangers to him. And what was more, he was a stranger to them. They didn't know him anymore. And how could they? At what point had he voiced his unhappiness? At what point had he confronted them and their hurtful secrecy?   
  
"Remus?" James shoved the book between them aside and scooted closer to him on the bed.  
  
"I know you all are keeping something from me." He hated the way the words fell in the eerily quiet room. They sounded like an accusation. The accusation he might have even made at the beginning of their little drama. He'd wanted to believe so bad that it was anger that was driving him. Anger at them for not taking his feelings into consideration. Anger at them for not accepting who he was, but proclaiming the opposite at the same time.   
  
He wanted to hate them for the tightness in his chest as he acknowledged the hypocritical nature of his own existence.   
  
Remus pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, to keep from embarrassing himself completely in front of James. He wanted to hate them because it was easier than hating himself. It was easier to comfort himself, telling himself that they were the ones who had distanced themselves first. They were the ones who had found him lacking, and left. Because it was easier to say that than to admit to himself that it was his own nature he loathed, and his own self that he saw falling so woefully short and that he could completely understand why they had left in the first place.  
  
"You're being ridiculous," James's matter-of-fact voice cut through his bleak thoughts, and Remus looked up, the disgusted frown evident on his face.   
  
"Am I now."  
  
James frowned back this time before throwing back his head again and sighing melodramatically. The hands plowed through the black mass of his hair once more, and Remus barely contained a wince at the gesture. "God, you're not going to make me do the girly crap talk, are you? That's a downright cruel thing to do to a person." The pained expression on James's face seemed to clinch it, to Remus's mind.   
  
"I'm not about to make you do anything, Potter." He climbed off the bed and started packing away the book. It was better to just severe ties. He hadn't managed to live this long with lycanthropy by rejecting reality when it reared its ugly head. If James wanted to continue the farce of their little lies, he could. But he could do it without Remus's help and without Remus's input.   
  
"Wait," James's voice held a soft plea as he grabbed the edge of Remus's shoulder and forced him to turn around. "Don't be like this."   
  
How exactly was he 'supposed' to be, then? He should have known that they'd like him better as an ignorant little lapdog then they did as someone who refused to be led around on a leash. But how much of that was his fault to begin with? They had no way of knowing how much he loathed the way he let uncertainties close his throat. If he never stood up and said so, if he never counteracted the measures he didn't agree with, how were they supposed to know how much he detested the submissive role he'd let them place him in?   
  
"I don't know how to be any other way," he snarled, narrowing his eyes once more as James seemed taken aback. Served the bloke right, too. James could have tried harder. Listened more closely. Potter led this little ragtag group, he should have seen Remus's defection coming, and Remus couldn't imagine that this was that big of a surprise.   
  
"Just what exactly is it that you think we're doing?" James's look of utter consternation made Remus want to rip something to shreds. How could James treat it so lightly? Where did the fairy tale end and the reality begin? Had they ever cared at all about him? Had they ever really been his friends, that they could treat his pain so casually like this? Maybe they'd gotten so used to seeing him physically broken and bruised that inflicting emotional pain on him didn't seem like that big of a deal.   
  
"Excluding me." Or maybe it was just that they'd never seen the pain to begin with. Maybe he'd just become that good of an actor. Living a life based entirely on a string of lies woven all together had to have made him particularly gifted at the art at some point. After all, few people had truly cottoned on to him in the five years he'd been at school.   
  
"We're not-"  
  
"Spare me," Remus spat out, batting James's hand away. "I'm not deaf, dumb, or blind." There was a certain symmetry to the way the world worked, Remus supposed. He gave people lies, presented to them a picture of himself that he knew wasn't the truth, and then got angry when they bought into the imaginary person he'd created. In return, they presented untruths and fabrications back to him, and he had the audacity to feel cheated by them. If all he ever gave out was lies, then lies were all he deserved in return. And maybe it really was just as simple as that.   
  
"I never said you were," James said, rolling his eyes before ruffling a hand through his hair. "Look, if it were up to me, I'd just tell you and be done with it." Remus was used to seeing the calculating look in James's eyes, and in a small way, it reassured him. "I'd try to tell you just have to have faith in us, and that we really aren't out to get your paranoid hide-"  
  
"Not good enough," Remus interjected quietly. Words were cheap.   
  
"Yeah, I know." James shot him a look of affronted disgust. "Give me some credit, at least. We're blokes of action, we are." He pulled out a slim book from his spell locked trunk, muttered a few incantations and then tossed it to Remus.   
  
"What the hell?" Remus ground out slightly as he clutched lightly at the book.   
  
"I've got two secrets," James explained patiently, his hands furiously working over his disheveled hair. "One secret I'm not allowed to tell you because I've already sworn I wouldn't until the time was right. Since that's not acceptable to you, I'm giving you the key to my other secret. If I betray your trust in me, you'll be able to read every last sentence in that journal. If I really do have your best interest at heart, then you'll never be able to read a word."   
  
Remus stared down at the book in his hands for a moment before opening it to glance down at the multitude of bare pages. James didn't seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, that in accepting the gesture, Remus was already placing faith in him with the hopes that the journal wasn't just another ruse designed to keep his nose out of their business. In accepting the bargain, Remus had to accept James's words at face value and believe that there was actually a secret within the pages that James valued enough to not want Remus to be privy to it.   
  
Peaking through his fringe, Remus stared hard at James for a moment, taking in the slightly pink tinge of the other boy's cheeks and the fact that both of James's hands were digging through his hair as if he might go bald in the next five seconds and the hands were there to prevent it. To even the untrained eye, James's nervousness and embarrassment was apparent.   
  
And that was enough of a reassurance for him, he decided.   
  
"So are we good?" James's voice remained steady, but Remus hadn't expected it to be otherwise. One didn't come to lead their group without having the mettle to throw some steel into it. A more wishy washy personality would have let Sirius run roughshod over everyone and catered to Peter's inanities. A figure made of less sterner stuff wouldn't have lasted three weeks, let alone five years in this merry little band. And Remus never would have stuck it out as long as this if it hadn't been apparent to him that James possessed enough determination to back his own half-baked ideas and enough energy to carry them out. Remus didn't follow just anyone.   
  
"For now." Remus allowed, grinning slightly at the wince James gave as Remus put the screws to him.  
  
  


End file.
